Sputnik Music Forums - any other death heads?

holy ****....

dude, i don't even know what to say. I started this thread ****in back when I registered in 2002.

you guys are gonna get a ****in kick out of this **** tho: I listen to the Grateful Dead and Phish now, like... all the time. I wear tye-dye Dead shirts.... I own Birkenstocks (don't really wear them ever tho) and I love the Disco Biscuits.

but right next to my Phish cds in my one CD case is Formulas, haha, which I still listen to all the time.

AND, Immortal is still the ****ing ****. So go figure, lol. I even had a new band ([url]www.myspace.com/roadsideweather518[/url]). If you go there, you can listen to our SICK cover of "Jessica" by the Allman Brothers. Thats some good guitar ****, regardless of whether you're a metalhead or not.

But you wanna know whats really hysterical? My first favorite band was Morbid Angel. Their bandleader's name is Trey. Phish is now my favorite band, and THEIR bandleader's name is Trey. Its weird too, because Trey from Morbid Angel is basically the death metal Jerry Garcia. The Dead used to play these things called Acid Tests, where everybody would drink kool-aid with LSD in it, and then they would just jam for everybody.

Morbid Angel used to do the same thing when they started; thats why Trey has all those scars on his right arm by his tattoo, from cutting himself when he was tripped out at their early shows trying to invoke Cthulhu or Azathoth by cutting a pentagram onto himself. And just reading all the interviews from when Formulas came out; the philosophy and whatnot that he talks about is just as heady and deep as all the stuff Jerry used to talk about. its just weird, the parallels haha.

but thats why this all makes sense to me. I used to trip and philosophise about the universe and smoke pot and whatnot, and always loved psychedelic ****, but I listened to death metal. Morbid Angel were basically the exact same way tho. I basically was out to make psychedelic thrashy black death metal (if that makes sense haha), writing about philosophy concepts from Sartre, while using HP Lovecraft imagery and metaphors. But then Phish came to SPAC on their last tour, and a lot of my friends liked them but I still hadn't liked what I had heard. But when I went up there with them (looking for drugs, lol) and walked through this forest path that opens up into the main parking lot, I was just overwhelmed.

It was so weird; seeing all these people in tye-dyes with dreads and Dead and Phish shirts and everything, it was so strange because I felt like.... I had come home. Like everything was just so chill and cool, and everybody had a smile and was having the time of their life. It was the weirdest thing. It was so liberating, because here were thousands of people just like me, gathered together, being a physical representation of everything that was inside of me, in terms of like... values and outlooks on life and everything. I just happened to listen to death metal lol.

and then the band came on. I didn't like their actual songs too much, but when they started jamming.... my god. They had a ****ing SICK light show that would improvise along with the mood of the music at the time. And then the 2nd set started (which is another thing... jambands play 2 sets of about 80 minutes per show, which is a TON better than one, long 2, 2 1/2 hour show. the break really helps). They started jamming this song they have called Piper. The song is this one riff segment thing that starts out really soft and quiet. Its in 4/4, but its 3 bars long, so it gives it this really cool hypnotic, cycling kind of feeling. They just repeat this riff over and over, building it up in intensity and throwing in little variations on the theme while doing so. There's two verses (Piper, piper, the red, red worm. I awoke last night to the sound of the storm, her words the words I sailed upon) and at the end of the 2nd verse, they turn everythign around into a big drum-fill section and then explode into the jam. I'd never heard anything like this before. And then like, 5 minutes or so into the jam when the groove really got cookin', i started seeing what I thought were lasers shooting over the audience. It started as a few, and then soon it was HUNDREDS of blue, red, green, and yellow lights arc-ing across the lawn. It was unbelievable, combined with the music and the stage light show going on. Turns out that it was hundreds, maybe even thousands, of individual glow-sticks that people were throwing in the air in time to the music. I know this sounds soo gay and corny, but man it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I mean, I'd been to the N.E. Metal and Hardcore fest, but I'd never been to a show with THAT many people all dancing to the same music (about 25,000). But yeah, it was that experience that hooked me.

Whats funnier is that Phish was playing their final shows at their own festival (what other band could hold THEIR OWN festival, with no other bands, and still draw 90,000 people to East Bumble****, Maine? probably only the Dead, Pink Floyd, Jimi, or Led Zeppelin, or the Beatles) in August, on the same dates that Angeldeath were in the studio for our 2nd cd. They were simulcasting the festival shows in over 1,000 movie theaters across the country. So whats that, an audience of like, 500,000 people total? Anyway, I was pretty distraught over the whole thing, because I never actually got to 'see' Phish when I actually cared. Being up at SPAC in the parking lot and outside of the fence was sorta like being there, but you couldn't see the band at all, only a teeny bit of the video monitors, and the sound wasn't satisfactory that far away. Also, I was stoned and since it was all new, I really don't remember that much about it. I also had a raging heroin addiction back then, too, but thats a whole other story (clean since 7/5/05. i actually put myself into detox/rehab on the one year anniversary of being exposed to Phish, 6/19/05).

But yeah, thats how this all happened, lol.

You know, its funny. I still listen to the Angeldeath cds (remember that **** guys? haha) and I'm actually really amazed at the 2nd one that we put out. If anyone here wants a copy, get at me; I can hook you up. You guys really should hear it.

I actually really want to send a copy of it to all the labels just to see what happens, because I really honestly think that its a major contender, that its actually like... just as good as you know, Altars of Madness, Blessed are the Sick, Scream Bloody Gore and all those other early thrashy death metal records. Theres a lot of progressive elements in there too, and you can hear me rip **** up on my red Ironbird, Trey-style haha (only a few of the solos are composed, all the other ones were improvised on the spot according to a specific feel or type of sound I wanted, pretty much just like Trey). You guys gotta hear this tho... actually, I have the CD in my car. I'll go get it and rip it to my computere here (at my g/f's) and put the stuff up on sendspace for you guys to check out. You HAVE to hear the new stuff, it really is amazing. Think like, Formulas mixed with Altars, spiced with some Slayer, Immortal, and Suffocation. We tried being a little heavier, without going into the stereotypical "NYDM" **** that was rampant around here in Albany...

alright, well I'm gonna wrap this long-*** post up now. I'll be back with links for those tunes. Don't hate, man. Hippies and metalheads can co-exist peacefully. We're exactly the same, just different, haha.

you'd be amazed, though, because Phish is SO not at all anything like the Grateful Dead. The only thing they share is that they jam. Phish is actually more like Yes and Rush, sort of. Its hard to describe; they do a lot of crazy progressive rock, fugue-like songs, but then they'll play sick rockers kinda like Boston, with even better guitar work, haha. I'll find something to show you guys. Plus, Phish jumped on trampolines. And their drummer played a vacuum. And played from 11:30 on 12/31/99 until about 6 in the morning on 1/1/00 for their millenium festival (they would always do New Years runs, but never fests) in front of about 85,000 people. You may have seen them play "Heavy Things" for Peter Jennings on ABC at like 3:30 in the morning, haha.

alright, i'm really done now. peace guys